Nightmare on Luke Street
by DSLeo
Summary: Luke wakes from a nightmare in this AU fluff-piece set roughly end of S2.


Nightmare on Luke Street

Disclaimer: Not mine. Duh.

Summary: Luke wakes from a nightmare in this AU fluff-piece set roughly end of S2.

Rating: T

Genre: Romance/Humor

AN: One of my favorite episodes is when Lorelai dreams she and Luke are having twins together. I re-watched as a mood-booster and here came this snippet.

GG GG GG

Luke Danes screamed awake.

Next to him, his wife screamed as well, striking him over the head with a pillow. "Die! Die! Die!"

Panting, Luke yelled, "Hey! It's me! It's okay!"

"What is?" shouted his wife.

Luke turned on the bedside lamp, wiped sweat from his face, and threw back the quilt. He gulped a little, eyes huge, asking frantically, "Are you okay? Are you okay?"

"Sure, fine, no problem, you just scared me like Jason Voorhies broke in the window!" shrieked his wife, sobbing into her pulled-up knees. "Oh my God, I knew it, I knew it. You don't want to be a dad, you don't want to have kids, you're having nightmares just sleeping next to me, oh God, I knew it, I knew it, you hate this, you hate me, you want Ra-Rah- _Rachel_!"

"Lorelai," said Luke hopelessly, and rubbed circles between her shoulder blades. "No. It's not that. C'mon. I love you."

"Yeah, and your ex-girlfriend's a redhead who…" Lorelai wailed forlornly. "Who's _skinny_! And she, she, _she came back three days before the wedding_! That wasn't coincidence, I told you it wasn't, I knew someone called her, I bet it was my mother, it had Emily all over it in big ugly red ink, it was bad enough she t-t-told _Chris_ and he showed up like…" Moaning, Lorelai surrendered speech for sobbing, her hands fluttering wildly in mid-air. Luke finally tracked a pattern. She was waving from their wedding photo (they looked nervously radiant), to the framed ultrasound (a blur that had no meaning to Luke beyond what the obstetrician insisted it had), to a photo of Lorelai and a very young Rory together (no sign of Christopher, as usual), and back around again.

"Like he just had to walk in and you'd run off with him," Luke finished for her in a dangerous growl. "Yeah. I was there. Lorelai. Sweetheart. Calm _down_. I had a nightmare, I'm sorry I woke you, it's okay, it is."

"No, it's not! Being married to me makes you have nightmares! And we don't even live on Elm Street!" Lorelai's arm flopped out in a general pointing action. "It's two blocks that way!"

Luke left her to the crying, splashed his face clean, then drank down a glass of water. He refilled the glass and carried it to the bedroom, setting it down against the moment Lorelai asked for it. He tucked himself back into bed, pulling the quilt to his waist while his wife sniffled and snuffled and mumbled miserably about being fat, ugly, and a poor substitute for skinny redheads who had nothing to tie him down. Who, she said in a pouting warble, also did not have a teenager, and if she did, that teenager wouldn't have a deadbeat father who only showed up to try to ruin a happy relationship.

"Done?" he gently asked at last.

The noise she made sounded like, "Meep."

Luke opened his arms. She plowed into him, head shoving into his shoulder. He grunted, stroking her tangled curls, rocking her a little. "Hey. Hey, I'm here. Rachel took great pictures at the wedding, and she left, right? By herself, right? I'm right here. Shh, sweetheart, I'm here, I'm not leaving you."

Big blue eyes stared unhappily at him. "P-p-promise?"

Managing not to make a face, he put up a hand and extended the smallest finger. "Pinky promise."

She hooked her pinky around his. "Okay. Puh-pinky promise."

"Believe me," sighed Luke, relieved to have that hormone-driven bout of insanity at an end, "my nightmare was not about being married to you. In fact, I was married to Taylor's lawyer."

He knew he'd said the wrong thing when she yelped, slapped his chest, and sat up with a furiously hissed, "That skinny salad-nibbling twig with a lollipop head? Hey! She's kinda red-haired!"

"Whoa!" snapped Luke, and tugged her tight to him again. "I said _nightmare_. You know how she is. Like one of those annoying little dogs that fit into a baseball glove, and no, you can't have one, I refuse to have a dog that can get beat up by a hamster."

Lorelai rolled her eyes but nodded.

"And for some reason, you were dating that weird guy who kept calling you Kumquat at the engagement party." Luke shuddered at the memory of the Emily-designed torture. "I still haven't figured out the food your mother served."

"Neither has my mother, it just looked fancy and cost a lot," grumbled Lorelai, and said, "I should get a glass of water, I…" Hiding a grin, Luke passed her the glass. She kissed his cheek, stubble and all. "Thanks, babe."

"You're welcome. Anyway…"

Lorelai glared at nothing in particular. "And it wasn't Kumquat, it was Umlaut. Dumb Digger with his stupid nicknames."

"Okay then," sighed Luke, and kissed her forehead lightly. "Anyway, I'm married to that _lawyer_ , you're dating Kumquat…"

Lorelai cocked her head and hummed. "What _is_ a kumquat?"

Luke groaned, head thumping backwards into the pillow. "You know the word, and you don't know what it is?"

"It's a fun word to say. Kumquat. Dirty," giggled Lorelai. "Besides, Rory used it in Scrabble against my dad once. Totally kicked his butt by a hundred points."

"It's a fruit," replied Luke a touch too dryly.

"Ah, that's why I don't recognize it. Wait, would I crave one if I knew one?"

Patience was not inexhaustible. Fortunately, exhaustion took the edge off impatience. "Am I telling you my nightmare or not?"

Lorelai subsided, snuggling in with a snicker. "Sorry, babe. Hormones."

"Yeah," scoffed Luke, and yawned. "So we're not together, Rory's old enough to drive…"

Both of them shivered.

"And she was dating my nephew."

They shared a grimace.

"And then it got _weird_."

Lorelai gaped at her husband. "It wasn't weird before that?"

Luke shrugged one shoulder. "I've always had weird dreams. The point is, everything's a mess and it's all backwards, and you came in the diner and told me you dreamed we were having twins and you called them Sid and Nancy."

Lorelai's mouth twisted to one side. "Uh-huh. And that made you scream awake?"

"Actually, no," admitted Luke, taking the glass away before she dumped its remaining contents on him. "All of a sudden, in my dream, you had that dream, and Rory's dad showed up with someone named Sherry…"

"Ah, that makes sense, he always drinks sherry," nodded Lorelai, sitting back and watching his face with the eagerness of a child at story-time.

With another shrug, Luke continued calmly, "And there was something in there about green being pink, so I think I better let Tom finish painting the nursery. And then we were together after all."

"Yay!" cheered Lorelai, clapping, before she went deadly quiet. Her eyes turned to steel. "Wait. You dream we're together after all and you scream awake? Like _that_?" Her hands dropped to her abdomen. "You do realize if it was a little further along, you could've scared me into labor!"

Cringing, Luke said, "Oh geez. No, I screamed awake when this kid who looked sorta like Rory, only a couple years younger, walked in and said her name was April and she's my kid nobody told me I had, so you dumped me and married Christopher." A snarl rose from him, primitive but perhaps justified. " _That's_ when I woke up."

"Oh babe," crooned Lorelai and hugged him softly. For once, he didn't mind she was wearing silly pajamas with candy kisses all over them. They were warm and soft and smelled of her. "That'd make me scream, too. I'm sorry. It's all the baby stuff. But it makes total sense. You just had that argument with Taylor over the building and that lawyer brought the papers today, and we're going crazy trying to get ready for the babies, and they're due in April, so…" She purred a gentle note. "Lots of anxieties coming together all at once. Poor Luke." She kissed his temple. "Mean nasty Christopher making you upset. Stupid Taylor. I'll let the air out of that husband-stealing lawyer's tires next time she's in Stars Hollow, and I'll… Well, I can't do anything to Chris, we'd have to know where he is, but hey, we can _think_ really mean things."

"You wouldn't leave me for him?" asked Luke, finally allowing the fear to take shape in serious words.

"Oh, babe, that'd be like leaving chocolate ice cream for rice cakes. No way. Gimme that sweet delicious Luke every time." Her breath misted into his ear. "Me hungry."

A red flush flooded Luke from head to toe. Another side effect of Lorelai's pregnancy turned out to be _very_ unpredictable hormones. Very. Not that it was all bad, of course. He chortled. "Really? What're you craving, Mrs. Danes?"

"Mm, big hunk of beefy man-love," she trilled. "With sweet lovin' for dessert." She sat up, gasping. "Ooh! Dessert! Blueberry milkshake, please? Pretty please? For the mother of your progeny, the bearer of your loin-fruit, the…"

Appalled, Luke exclaimed, "It's three in the morning!"

Lorelai looked blank, then threw back the quilt. "So? Oh, fine, I'll make it myself."

"No, no, no, don't do that!" yipped Luke, and flung himself out of bed. "Last time you made a milkshake, I spent a day washing the ceiling."

"Hey, not my fault the blender was possessed by gremlins!" Lorelai called after him. "Oh, and throw in some almonds! I'm so craving almonds!"

Luke grunted, padded downstairs, and discovered that Rory was awake, drinking a glass of apple juice. "Ah crap," he muttered. "Sorry, kid."

Rory yawned enormously. "S'okay."

"I had a nightmare," he explained sheepishly, assembling the blender before rooting through the refrigerator for ingredients. "Want a milkshake? As an apology for being woken up?"

"Nah, it's okay, I was waking up at four anyway."

"Rory," began Luke, a small carton of blueberries in the hand he almost raked over his head. "You can't…"

"I know, I just got really caught up last night, in all these ideas on Poe's essay about the imp of the perverse…"

"Also known as your mother," groused Luke under his breath.

"…And it hit me so hard, wow, what a great angle for my paper, and, well, y'know, if I have that done before breakfast, I can go over flash cards for chemistry before school and not have Paris kill me," finished Rory triumphantly, if wearily. She tiptoed up and kissed his cheek. "I promise, no coffee after seven."

"Really?" said Luke happily, hopeful his crusade against caffeine might have worked.

"In the evening," amended Rory with a mischievous grin, then vanished into her bedroom. The last he heard before he turned on the blender was a cheery, "Ah-ha! My earplugs!"

"Crazy girl," he decided fondly, then whipped up the milkshake, topped it with shaved almonds, and tidied up before shoving the milkshake into the refrigerator.

Sure enough, when he went back upstairs, Lorelai was curled up on her side, sound asleep again, cheek on a well-worn book of baby names.

"Crazy lady," he murmured, turning off the light. "You're having milkshake for breakfast."

"Mm-ff-zz," she replied as he tossed the book somewhere into the laundry hamper's vicinity.

"I added soy protein powder," he said. It was an honest statement, but also a test of how deeply asleep she was.

She said nothing.

He laid a hand on her abdomen. "And we're not naming them Sid and Nancy."

Again, Lorelai was silent.

"Or Jimmy and Margarita."

When that brought no response, he pushed his luck.

"How about Richard and Emily?"

Lorelai didn't stir, save to breathe.

Content, Luke curled up around her. Yes, it had been quite the adventure, wooing and winning and wedding Lorelai. For all her insecurities and minor lunacies, he wouldn't change a moment. In fact, he couldn't wait to wake up, and see what happened next.

GG GG GG

AN: I need fluff. I write fluff. Fluff.


End file.
